Vidhya Ranganathan

Taramani

After all the moving hustle and bustle tried to take some time off to watch this movie. A film that was supposed to be centered around the IT corridor, touches a lot of topics from cricket to demonetization.

Long story short, this movie revolves around Althiya (Andrea), Prabhunath (Vasanth Ravi), Sowmya (Anjali), urbanization and feminism, with a Marxist touch to each of those characters and situations. Given the plethora of tracks the director wishes to convey, director’s voice over in between the scenes did help in bringing out the context of the scene. Taramani is a both good and bad at the same time.

Caution: Spoilers (Warnings) ahead!

All through the movie, there were few stereotypes that made me cringe. First of them is Anglo-Indian portrayal. The director seems to be really hooked on the idea of Anglo Indian girls are meant to drink, smoke, party, and live free. If she ends up in IT industry, she is definitely cool with sexist remarks! The intro scenes is a mark of how insane the female lead can go to believe some stranger and entrust her life!(Wait, isn’t that how all female leads are in Tamil movies!)

How many more movies are going to picture a female lead who is gorgeous, educated and independent but falls for an abusive relationship and still keeps re-iterating that she loves him the most!? Top it with some cliche dialogues!

Male lead dialogues are outright sexist and it is definitely an overdose. Who would want to watch a movie where all that the male lead cares about is to know how did Andrea’s boss know her size or if she slept with every other person in her facebook friend list!

Can someone please go tell directors that a girl smoking or drinking is no way connected to feminism and just because you portray such scenes in a movie, does not make you a great feminist!

And, a so-called-feminist movie is not complete without the standard, “All men are dogs” dialogue. Here we have, “All men are dogs, there is no good dog or bad dog, u need to just keep giving biscuits!!!!”

The characterization of male lead is marked by the following scenes:

Falls in love with a Sowmya(Anjali), a girl who wears saree and is unhappy about the fact that her boss is mad at her for adorning a saree always.

Sowmya goes on an onsite project and then goes on a complete makeover from saree to modern(read as mini) outfits and eventually dumps this guy

So the male lead here decides to grow beard, do nothing, smoke, and drink

One rainy day, Andrea comes into his life. The male lead decides to tell her that he was dumped, he was a thief and a possibly a murder(all this in the very first meeting with a stranger!)

Eventually, Andrea, who is an HR person in an IT company, is impressed with this fellow and drops by his doorstep the next day to get him some food.

They now engage in a casual chat, where she remarks that he is the first person to have not admired her legs and then he bends down to do the same!!!!!

And then this happens:

So in order for the male lead to digest these things, he decides to find out if all girls are the same. How does he do that, cold calling a few numbers and proving that most married ladies are into the ‘Sabalam’ mode and fall in for an illicit relationship! That was my saturation point in the movie!

From there to point where the male lead realizes his mistake and tries to reunite with Andrea is the typical movie story line. The above-mentioned scenes should justify why this movie deserves ‘A’ certificate(definitely not the one in the image below)

Taramani is yet another movie that romanticized abusive relationship and is filled with an overdose of sexist dialogues. That said, this is by far the best performance from Andrea. She does this complicated role with such an ease!